Netflix UK: the best series and films to watch in 2024

Jeff Goldblum stars in Kaos

(Image credit: Justin Downing / Netflix / FlixPix / Alamy Stock Photo)

last updated 18 December 2024

Contributions from

Netflix is Britain's most popular TV streaming service, and here's our pick of the best bingeable series and the top films to watch.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Until his death in 2014, the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez maintained that his 1967 magnum opus, "One Hundred Years of Solitude", was impossible to commit to film, said Shirley Li in The Atlantic. But Netflix has now had a go at turning the magical realist novel into a 16-part drama, the first half of which is streaming now, with the second half due to be released next year. Happily, part one is superb – "as haunting and wondrous" as García Márquez's admirers could hope for, and every bit as ambitious as his book. "Watching it feels like watching a gorgeous, strange, enchanting dream."

The story opens in rural Colombia in the early 1800s with Buendía (Diego Vásquez) marrying his cousin, Úrsula (Marleyda Soto), said Ed Potton in The Times. He then murders a man, and flees with Úrsula and a band of friends to find a new home. "They aim for the coast but have to settle disappointingly for a swamp, where they build Macondo, a fictional town" that comes to embody "the sweep – and circularity – of Latin American history". Filmed in Colombia with a massive cast, of whom some 70% are non-professionals, the series "looks gorgeous", but I was struck by a general "sense of lethargy. While the book teems with life, this feels stretched out."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Jeff Goldblum is a "self-obsessed, neurotic Florida Jew" and also Zeus, the King of the Gods, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. He is hellbent on preventing the realisation of a prophecy that he thinks will bring about his demise. His family reckon he's paranoid, but he's right to think his life is in danger, as his former pal, now prisoner, Prometheus (Stephen Dillane) plots his downfall. This "sour, upper-class, Downton-meets-Palm Beach comedy of manners" is a reworking of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but with countless other myths woven in.

From the get-go this historical romp is a "solid gold comedy banger", said Julia Raeside on the i news site. It is “loosely based” on Giovanni Boccaccio's "hefty" 14th century book, set in 1348 with the Black Death ravaging Italy. A group of monied types and their servants take refuge in a countryside villa for a fortnight "while the plague does its worst outside the gates". But they are harbouring secrets, making this "'The White Lotus' in jerkins with a much higher body count". Kathleen Jordan's writing "gleams like a new blade", and although Tanya Reynolds "steals almost every scene she's in" the rest of the cast, which includes Zosia Mamet from "Girls", is also "pretty dazzling".

The group soon realise they are in "a gilded life raft on a sea of anarchy and disease," said James Poniewozik in The New York Times. Jordan says the early days of Covid were an inspiration, particularly the tone-deaf videos that a number of celebrities released, revealing just how out of touch they were. This "rollicking social comedy of striving and survival" has a "cheeky" tone with a soundtrack that moves between Vivaldi and New Order.

"Modern Family" star Sofia Vergara is "icily impressive" as "real-life drug boss Griselda Blanco Restrepo", said the Daily Mail. This six-episode "story of female empowerment and brutal criminality" charts the Colombian immigrant's rise to become one of the most powerful and feared drug importers in Miami. Episode one "grabs you by the throat" with a quote from Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar: "The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco." Vergara, also credited as executive producer, delivers "an astonishing performance", said Empire. Referred to by her cartel as "the Godmother", her character is "both a complete terror and someone who can nurture with motherly love". And it's Vergara's "ability to effortlessly shift between these two modes that makes her such a striking presence. Every moment hangs on Vergara's work, and the show suffers when she's not present."

The directorial debut of Dan Levy of "Schitt's Creek", this film "looks so glossily moneyed" you assume it's going to be "shallow and rather dumb", said Wendy Ide in The Guardian. But Levy, who also wrote the screenplay and stars in it, too, has made a "satisfyingly adult, bittersweet drama" which shows that even a "seemingly gilded life can be painfully messy". It tells the tale of Marc (Levy), a London-based illustrator who is broken when his husband, Oliver (Luke Evans), dies unexpectedly. But as he grieves, Marc discovers a secret that makes him question how well he knew his partner, and he heads to Paris to get some answers. The film is elevated by "crisp dialogue", which "captures bonds of friendship that are loving, but at the same time stretched to breaking point".

The story of the Uruguayan plane crash in the remote Andes in 1972, and "the ordeal of the survivors who resorted to cannibalism", is "powerfully retold" in this film by Spanish director J.A. Bayona, said The Guardian. As time passes with no sign of rescue, "drinking water is not a problem because of the snow, but gnawing hunger sets in". The extreme cold has preserved the dead bodies "and the awful decision has to be made". "Society of the Snow" is a "fervent film, heartfelt and shot with passion and flair". It "downplays the explicit revulsion of what was happening, in favour of highlighting the agony and tough resilience in the gruelling conditions" endured by the survivors. "The sense of isolation, cold and hopelessness it conveys is crushing," said Mail Plus, and we watch as "the teammates make momentous decisions in order to stave off death long enough to find a way back to civilisation".

"The Brothers Sun" is a "tale of two halves" featuring a "nuclear family living oceans apart". Eileen (Michelle Yeoh) "dotes on" her son Bruce, a "dorky medical student" who's been using his education fees to "finance his true passion: improv", said Time. But Bruce is also in the dark about his estranged father, who is head of a Taiwanese triad, and has groomed Bruce's brother Charles – "a brother Bruce hasn't seen since childhood" – as "a deadly assassin". The Suns split years ago to protect the family. What is "remarkable" is the "seamlessness with which Yeoh, who radiates determination, unites two sides of a woman who is, at once, an overprotective mother and the secret weapon of Taipei's predominant triad".

The film is based on Nyad's 2015 memoir, and "follows the 64-year-old swimming legend" as she strives to "achieve her lifelong dream of completing a 110-mile open-ocean swim from Cuba to Florida", said the Mail. "Nyad" in Greek translates as "water nymph", said Empire, "as numerous people in this unlikely true story repeatedly remind us", and "there is a sense of quasi-divine destiny" driving Nyad on. This adds a "sprinkling of magic that this film about her late-in-life athletic conquest hungrily seizes". Mythological allusions aside, this is "a sports movie in the most American of traditions", displaying the tropes of the genre: "the underdog, the comeback, the pick-yourself-up-when-all-hope-seems-lost can-do attitude".

Ruling the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon, Alexander the Great ascended the throne in 336BC, and was hailed as "one of the greatest military leaders of all time", said The Guardian. This new documentary "uses every means at its disposal" to get us excited about his life. "Historian talking heads" and recent archaeological discoveries are interspersed with "suitably energetic dramatic reconstructions, which make heavy use of mascara and blue contact lenses, as well as growling extras holding sharpened poles". The action "gets going properly" when Philip II, Alexander's father, dies and "the young commander decides he's absolutely had it with the Persians".

"3 Body Problem" is based on the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" book trilogy by Liu Cixin, a great success in China, with global fans who "range from Mark Zuckerberg to Barack Obama to 'Thrones' author George R.R. Martin", said The Hollywood Reporter. The book "chronicles humanity's efforts to survive an impending invasion from an alien race that's fleeing a dying planet". It begins in 1967 China during the Cultural Revolution "and stretches to, well… to a very, very long time from now". Much of the first season follows a "fractious group of physicists" led by a "shadowy British intelligence chief" as they "spar against a murderous cult that wants to help the aliens colonize Earth". UK release date: 21 March

"Everything fans love about 'Bridgerton' has been exaggerated to create a fuller, more colorful, bejeweled world" in season three, said HuffPost. Colin and Penelope undergo a transformation, but they are not the only ones "grappling with their identities". "Every character is wrestling with change, with the growing pains that come from both necessary and self-imposed evolution and the internal conflict that is often the byproduct of denying a part of oneself."

Explore More

Adrienne Wyper has been a freelance sub-editor and writer for The Week's website and magazine since 2015. As a travel and lifestyle journalist, she has also written and edited for other titles including BBC Countryfile, British Travel Journal, Coast, Country Living, Country Walking, Good Housekeeping, The Independent, The Lady and Woman’s Own.

With contributions from